Voluntary Sector Children and Youth Forum
Minutes of the meeting held at Spotlight
Tuesday 11th November 2014
Welcome & Introductions
Glenys Tolley welcomed everyone to the meeting. She thanked Spotlight for hosting the meeting.
Spotlight’s work with children and young people in Tower Hamlets Helal Ahmed
Helal welcomed everyone to Spotlight, a creative youth space designed by young people for young people. The ethos is to open up opportunities to inspire young people in creative arts. They run termly programmes and are open to all young people in Tower Hamlets.
Helal talked about the introduction of Toghl, in partnership with LBTH’s Social Inclusion Team, which is like large Meccano, and is available for children aged 9+ referred through the short breaks team.
Liaison with LBTH officers:
Anne Canning, Service Head, Learning and Achievement
020 7364 3114
Anne provided an update on current developments and responded to a couple of questions from the Forum:
We understand that that the work within Early Years services MSG area will no longer be contracted through the MSG programme. How will these services be covered in the future? Will there be a separate commissioning process, or is part of the planned cuts?
The Early Years grants will be allocated outside the MSG programme. It is unsure at the moment when information on how to access the grants will go out, but Anne stressed the considerable difference is that the Early Years Team will make the decisions with Anne. Anne suggested there could be a rep from VSCYF on the decision making group and will take this suggestion back to her team.
In response to a query about whether the next Early Years grants will cover early education, work with children and work with families of very early years children as in the previous MSG Early Years strand, Anne commented that it should cover all but it depends on what grants come through.
Please update on the savings proposals, and how they may affect the voluntary sector.
Anne has asked Monica Forty to respond to this query, but there are three in the from Anne’s service in the Education, Social Care and Wellbeing Directorate that may impact the Voluntary Sector:
CAMHS, day nurseries, and children’s centres. The Mayor is clear that he is not keen on reducing services to CAMHS and has also asked for a review on day nurseries, the members are unhappy at the proposals for them.
PWC
Anne noted the significant difference between the published report and Eric Pickles statement. There will be a direct impact on East End Life, and three commissioners will be appointed. There is a 20 day appeals process in which the Mayor can respond.
There is a moratorium on the administrations of all grants until they are approved by the commissioners; this includes the statutory two year olds grant and the grants for higher education students. If the grant allocation is already in the system it will go ahead; all others will initially need approval from the commissioners. The commissioners will not be overseeing procurement as this is different to grants. All queries should go through Anne Canning and Karen Badgery in the first instance.
Sarah Baker, Independent Chair, Tower Hamlets LSCB (Local Safeguarding Children Board)
Sarah has a background in health as a children’s nurse and a health visitor, she was in the health service for 28 years. She is an LSCB independent chair, living in Surrey. The distance enables her to be objective. She is also the independent chair of both the Children and Adult Safeguarding boards in Barking and Dagenham.
Sarah likes coming out and meeting frontline services and developing an understanding of how services operate in Tower Hamlets. She chairs the board in a way that generates discussion.
The key areas of concern for Tower Hamlets include:
Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE)
In Tower Hamlets we looking at how we can protect young girls from CSE. Sarah is meeting with CAMHS re CSE because the support they can offer is a significant part of their service. An independent review of CSE in Tower Hamlets will be starting soon.
Domestic Abuse
On top of deprivation, the welfare reforms have had a huge impact in families leading to increased levels of domestic abuse where children are witnessing it and caught up in the middle.
Gang Violence
Young men are becoming victim to gang violence or perpetrators. The LSCB is currently finalising a thematic review of 6 young men in Tower Hamlets in different ways caught up in violence. They have drawn on research looking at the impact of head injury as young child and impact on violent behaviour. It is emerging that all young men had a head injury in younger years. Sarah didn’t think though that these injuries were as a result of being shaken as babies. The LSCB has a responsibility to undertake Serious Case Reviews of children up to the age of 18 who have been a victim of serious crime, or seriously injured another. The recommendations will apply to the whole of Tower Hamlets.
Also concerned about young women’s involvement in gangs, as victims as well as perpetrators, they know that gang violence is broader.
Next meeting date:
The next VSCYF meetings are on Thursday 15th January and Tuesday 17th March
10am-12pm
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